Page 29 (2/2)

"What’s going on?" said Lee "They’re leaving the field, but why?"

There seemed to be no reason for it: Lord Asriel’s allies were outnumbered, their weapons were less potent, andwounded

Then Will felt a suddendrifting in the air

"Specters!" said John Parry "That’s the reason"

And for the first tis, like veils of shi from the sky like thistledown But they were very faint, and when they reached the ground, they were ?" said Lyra

"They’refor that platoon of Asriel’s riflemen - "

And Will and Lyra kneould happen, and they both called out in fear: "Run! Get away!"

So out fro a Specter reedy, raised their guns and fired, but of course with no effect And then it struck the first man it came to

He was a soldier froed tawny cat spotted with black, and she drew back her teeth and prepared to spring

They all saw thean inch - and then they saw the dae, helpless, and theher na hiht, Will," said John Parry "Let us out noe can fight those things"

So Will opened the ide and ran out at the head of the arest battle he could ihosts clambered out of the earth, pale for to fear anyainst the invisible Specters, grappling and wrestling and tearing at things Will and Lyra couldn’t see at all

The rifle allies were behostly, spectral co the knife, re how the Specters had fled from it before

Wherever he went, Lyra went, too, wishing she had so around, watching ht she could see the Specters fro of the air; and it was Lyra who felt the first shiver of danger

With Salht rise, just a bank of earth surreat sweep of country the invaders were laying waste

The sun was above her Ahead, on the western horizon, clouds lay heaped and brilliant, riven with chash-altitude winds That way, too, on the plain, the enehtly, flags astir with color, regi

Behind, and to her left, was the ridge of jagged hills leading up to the fortress They shone bright gray in the lurid pre-storht, and on the distant raures

And it was about then that Lyra felt the first distant lurch of nausea, pain, and fear that was the unmistakable touch of the Specters

She knehat it was at once, though she’d never felt it before And it told her two things: first, that she h now to become vulnerable to the Specters, and secondly, that Pan must be somewhere close by

"Will - Will - " she cried

He heard her and turned, knife in hand and eyes ablaze

But before he could speak, he gave a gasp,lurch, and clutched his breast, and she knew the sa to hi on tiptoe to look all around

Will was bending over, trying not to be sick After a fewpassed away, as if their de theunshots, cries, voices crying in pain or terror, the distant yok of cliff-ghasts circling overhead, the occasional whiz and thock of arrows, and then a new sound: the rising of the wind

Lyra felt it first on her cheeks, and then she saw the grass bending under it, and then she heard it in the hawthorns The sky ahead was huge with storone from the thunderheads, and they rolled and swirled with sulphur yellow, sea green, sh and as wide as the horizon

Behind her the sun was still shining, so that every grove and every single tree between her and the stor the dark with leaf and twig and fruit and flower

And through it all went the two no-longer-quite-children, seeing the Specters al at Will’s eyes and lashing Lyra’s hair across her face, and it should have been able to blow the Specters away; but the things drifted straight down through it toward the ground Boy and girl, hand in hand, picked their way over the dead and the wounded, Lyra calling for her daemon, Will alert in every sense for his

And now the sky was laced with lightning, and then the first alhty crack of thunder hit their eardrums like an ax Lyra put her hands to her head, and Will nearly stu to each other and looked up, and saw a sight no one had ever seen before in any of the millions of worlds

Witches, Ruta Skadi’s clan, and Reina Miti’s, and half a dozen others, every single witch carrying a torch of flaring pitch pine dipped in bitu over the fortress froht toward the storround could hear the roar and crackle as the volatile hydrocarbons flah above A few Specters still remained in the upper airs, and so, to cry out and tus had reached the earth by this tiht of witches streamed like a river of fire into the heart of the storels, ared from the Clouded Mountain to meet the witches head-on They had the wind behind them, and they sped forward faster than arrows; but the witches were equal to that, and the first ones soared up high and then dived into the ranks of the angels, lashing to left and right with their flaring torches Angel after angel, outlined in fire, their wings ablaze, tu froreat drops of rain came down If the commander in the storm clouds meant to douse the witch fires, he was disappointed; the pitch pine and the bitu more loudly as round as if they’d been hurled inup into the air Within awith cold, and the rain stung their heads and arh it all they stu in the tumult: "Pan! Pan!"

The thunder overhead was al as if the very ato of fear ran Will and Lyra, howling, both of them - "Pan! My Pantalaimon! Pan!" from Lyra and a wordless cry from Will, who knehat he had lost, but not what she was named

With the the out for the Specters the children could still not fully see But Lyra had to hold Salth left to cling to Lyra’s shoulder Tialys was scanning the skies all around, searching for his kindred and calling out whenever he saw a needle-bright darting h the air above But his voice had lost much of its power, and in any case the other Gallivespians were looking for the clan colors of their two dragonflies, the electric blue and the red-and-yellow; and those colors had long since faded, and the bodies that had shone with them lay in the world of the dead

And then came a movement in the sky that was different fro their eyes fro raindrops, they saw an aircraft unlike any they’d seen before, ungainly, six-legged, dark, and totally silent It was flying low, very low, froher than a rooftop above them, and then moved away into the heart of the storm

But they had no ti throb of nausea told Lyra that Pan was in danger again, and then Will felt it, too, and they stuh the puddles and the hosts, helpless, terrified, and sick